Say Anything: a masterclass in non-physical conflict

0:00If you want to write stories or readers will love, there are three things you need to do. Understand storytelling principles, see how other writers have applied those principles, and then use them in your own work. Here on the Strohaned Podcast, our goal is to de-mystify story theory. We'll help you with the first two steps so that you can get started with the third. I'm Melanie Hill, editor, poet and author of Middle Grade novel Jack Cooper, and I help writers identify and solve their story problems. And I'm Valerie Francis, I'm an author and a story editor and IT traders, how to craft a book so good, it hooks a reader on page one and never lets them go. On today's episode, Valerie pitched, say anything so that we can study the middle build belonging to the villain. Now this 1989 film was written and directed by Cameron Crowe. Now of course there will be spoilers because we can't

1:04talk about the movie without talking about the movie. And please help other writers find our show by leaving a rating and review. For Apple Podcast listeners, you can do it right from your phone. Simply go to the shows landing page and scroll to the bottom. It is that simple. And if you're watching us on YouTube, please hit the like and subscribe buttons so that you never miss an episode. All right, Valerie, this movie, it's not age so well. So my question is, does the middle build belong to the villain in say anything? Well, you're right, it does not age very well at all. The 55 year old mother and me doesn't see the big deal about Lloyd at all. At all, I think Diane should have raised the bar a little bit, but you know, that aside, yes, in terms of story structure, this is a really interesting look at how the villain is driving the middle build of a story. Okay, so let's get into it.

2:08I want you to cast your mind back to season 15 when I studied villain monologues. Now if you haven't listened to those episodes yet, you definitely want to go back and check them out because as I will explain in a minute, that is a key part. These these monologues are a key part to this whole concept of the middle build belonging to the villain. Now, by the middle build, I mean act two of a story. If you think of a story as having three acts, I mean the middle of the middle act two. So act one would be the beginning act two is the middle act three is the end. And the middle of a story is at least 50% of the whole narrative. Now, when I say that the middle build belongs to the villain, the word belongs means that the villain is driving the action, is moving the plot forward. And when I say villain, I'm talking about the antagonist generally or the force of antagonism. So the phrase the middle build belongs to the villain really means that at least half of the plot is driven by the antagonist.

3:14Okay. Now, the protagonist wants something in a story. We've covered that many many times here on the podcast. And for at least half of the story, the antagonist is getting in the protagonist's way and making it very difficult or maybe even impossible for the protagonist to get what he wants. In say anything, the protagonist is Lloyd Doppler. What he wants is a relationship with Diane Now the antagonist is Diane's father James. In the middle of this story Lloyd gets to date Diane and he even gets to have sex with her, but he doesn't get to have a lasting relationship with her. Now, say anything is a courtship romance and in every courtship romance, the object of desire is a committed relationship doesn't have to end in a proposal or a marriage, but the two people are in the relationship have to commit to the relationship and to each other by the end of the story.

4:14That's the happily ever after convention, right? That a reader or a movie goer. When they sit down to watch this type of movie, that's what they're expecting. That's that's why they're watching it. They want that the woman fuzzy feeling at the end. Now, very often love stories like these have a triangle, right? It's the love triangle. We've all heard of it before and typically the third person in that triangle is the antagonist who is keeping the lovers apart. Now, in say anything, we do not have a love triangle. The antagonist is Diane's father and it works really well. James is a highly effective antagonist and it makes perfect sense for the story and for the setup here and for the genre for the dad to be the antagonist. Yes, it's a courtship romance. It's a contemporary romance, but specifically it is a teen romance

5:16with a very strong maturation arc. Diane and Lloyd have just graduated high school. They're like 18 years old in this movie. They're still kids. Diane still lives with her dad and he is still a very strong figure in her life. Now, a quick side note here on character archetypes and character roles. James is indeed the primary antagonist of the story, but he's also the mentor and he's the threshold guardian. So this is a terrific example of how roles are not specific to a character. They can shift around from character to character or you can have one character inhabiting many roles. So let's get back to the act breakdown in the middle build of say anything. So I said a minute ago that act two is at least 50% of the story. Well, in say anything, it is not 50%. It's actually 65%. That's huge. So without a strong antagonist,

6:19the story wouldn't have a chance. It just wouldn't have it would it would fizzle so fast. And you know, for those of you who like math and if you want to know, act one is about 20% and act three is about 15%. Okay. In act two, it begins when Lloyd arrives to pick Diane up for their first date and it ends with that famous scene of Lloyd standing outside Diane's house holding the boom box over his head and playing very loudly in your eyes by Peter Gabriel, which is brilliant song. I love that song. I wish we could just play it as the intro to this podcast, but sadly, I don't have the right to work. All right, because the second act of a story is so big and this one is particularly big. Very often, storytellers will break this huge middle block down into smaller or manageable chunks. In Hollywood films, it is very common for the middle built to be broken in half

7:26with a midpoint shift right in the middle. Yes, there are other ways to break down stories, absolutely, but that whole topic is outside the scope of my study this season. So I'm just going to park that for now. The only thing we need to know at this moment is that say anything does indeed follow the common Hollywood approach. The story, the middle of the story has two distinct parts and they're separated by midpoint shift. Okay, let's look at the first part of the middle. In the first part, Lloyd and Diane are getting to know one another. They go to the party, Lloyd goes to her house for dinner and her father with her father and his business partners. So in this part of the story, what's happening is that the antagonist is evaluating the protagonist. So you have to remember that the middle build of a story is the extraordinary world. This is the world of the antagonist. This is their home turf. And if you look at a story from the

8:29antagonist's perspective, the stranger, the protagonist, has arrived in their domain. And so the antagonist then has to evaluate this new entity in their world and assess whether the stranger poses a threat or not. All right. What happens then in this first part of act two is that we see James, Diane's dad, keeping a very close eye on Lloyd, a very close eye. And he's watching their relationship develop. So at the first date, James isn't worried at all, right? I mean, Lloyd is kind of dorky and he isn't like any of the other boys that Diane has dated. He's awkward. He's nervous. And let's face it, Diane is clearly out of Lloyd's league.

9:34Everybody knows this. Even Lloyd knows this. So James is amused by Lloyd, but he doesn't take him seriously as a threat. The other thing that you need to remember is that while the protagonist has an object of desire for the whole story, the antagonist also has an object of desire. And what the antagonist wants is in conflict with what the protagonist wants. Lloyd wants a committed relationship with Diane. James wants Diane to have a bright successful future without Lloyd. The world is her oyster. And in James's opinion, Lloyd is nothing but a hanger on. So in the first half of the middle, we see James observing the developing relationship, but he's not he's not super worried. It's when, you know, his body sense is start to tingle when Diane brings Lloyd

10:43to the seniors home where she works and starts to introduce him around to the residents there. And he gets a little more concerned when he sees Lloyd teaching Diane how to drive the car that he bought for her and he bought her a standard for some reason that she can't drive. And for some reason, even though she's only there for the summer and then moving to England, but anyway, it's a bit of a plot hole in my opinion, but we'll just again, I'm looking at it as a mother. I would not buy my kid a car if they were going to move away in two months time. Anyhow, moving on. The whole driving teaching Diane to drive the car thing, why this is becoming a threat to James is because he's realizing that Diane is beginning to replace him. Right? Lloyd is now the person that Diane is going to for advice for

11:43help when she needs things like learning how to drive the car. And with respect to the car, if you remember at the beginning of the movie when Diane gets the car in the first place, she says to her father, you have to teach me how to drive it. And he says, of course, so this was something that father and daughter were going to do together and now it's daughter with her boyfriend. So, James assesses Lloyd and honestly finds him wanting in every possible way. Right? So the car that Lloyd drives is inferior to Diane's. The clothes that he wears are inferior. Lloyd has no dreams or hopes or goals for the future. I mean, kickboxing, that's about it, that's hardly a career. That's hardly someone who's going to be able to carry their own weight in a relationship with Diane who is going to, you know, who has a full scholarship and is going to meet all these amazing people and have this wonderful career with her fabulous post-secondary education.

12:50Lloyd just isn't, isn't you playing in the same sandbox? Right? Lloyd's only ambition is to spend every waking minute with Diane. That's his only goal in life. So in James's view, there's nothing special about Lloyd whatsoever. He's just latched himself onto Diane and his fear is that Lloyd will hold Diane back from what otherwise should be a wonderful future that they have been working toward for a very long time. Now, James has problems of his own with the IRS and so Diane soon feels guilty about spending time with Lloyd instead of with her father and she says to Lloyd, and this made me laugh this scene, but she says to Lloyd, quote, I feel so bad being with you. I mean, but every guy wants to hear, right?

13:50I feel so bad being with you. I feel selfish. I feel like I should be spending more time with my dad. It's not fair to you. Half the time I'm with you, I'm thinking of other things. Now, it's not explicitly on the screen that her father, who is the antagonist, is demanding this from Diane. But it makes sense given their close relationship and their history. Diane hardly sees her mom. Although it's not clear why I think this is another, this to me, this explanation feels like it came out in an edit somewhere because I feel like we probably were supposed to know why Diane is not close to her mom. We know that Diane in the divorce was forced to choose between her parents and she chose her dad. But in the version of the movie we have, it doesn't seem that her mother is a negligent mother in any way or a bad parent in any way. But we do know that she isn't close with Diane. She very rarely gets to see Diane. So clearly Diane is close to her dad and it's just kind of

14:56been the two of them toughening it out in life. Now, in fact, I think that if we were to, like, if there was a camera in their house and we were able to see all of the interactions, I bet James probably doesn't openly demand that Diane spend all her time with him. I think this is just the nature of this particular father-daughter relationship. For Diane, her dad is her world. So again, it makes sense that Diane would feel like she's supposed to be spending more time with her father right now when her father is going through such a hard time. Okay, so that's the first half of the middle of the story. The antagonist James assessing the threat of Lloyd in his world and the antagonist making his presence known to the protagonist. But up to this point,

15:59the antagonist hasn't actively gotten in the protagonist's way. So as a result to fill up the screen time here, there's a lot of time spent on subplots. There's a lot of time spent on subplots. That's a whole other topic. Again, I don't have time to go into it right now, but just watch this movie and observe how much of that part of the story is the subplot of Corey and the boy she broke up with. What was his name, Joe? How much time is devoted to that relationship and the 65 songs that Corey has written to him and all that kind of stuff? All right, but then we get to the midpoint shift and the midpoint shift is an event in the story that happens at the midpoint, like right around the 50% mark up the whole story, and it shifts the narrative in some way. That's why it's called a midpoint shift. It's also called a midpoint turning point. I like the shift word because it reminds me of the function of what this thing is supposed to do.

17:04In say anything, the midpoint shift is when Diana Lloyd have sex. I mean, that's definitely going to change things, right? Now James is losing control of Diane. Right? For the first time, Diane did not call home to check in with her dad to say, yes, I'm still out. I'm having fun. Everything is going all right. I'm safe. She didn't do that. That means that Lloyd is now a target that must be destroyed. Now, I'm being very blunt here. It's not quite that black and white that the story is a little more nuanced than that, but if you watch this again or if you remember the story, you'll see that that's essentially what's happening here. Lloyd is now a threat. And he has to be removed because James can see that Diana's falling in love with him. And Diane doesn't even see it at this point, but James can see it. And this is this is now a problem,

18:10right? This is threatening James's object of desire, which is to have his daughter launch into the world with a good education and a bright future. So it's in the second half of the middle build that we get the villains monologue. And in the case of say anything, the monologue, the villains monologue is his most targeted and vicious attack. So when we're writing stories, very often, I mean, we know that we need to have conflict in the story. Very often, writers default to physical conflict, like somebody punching out somebody else. And yep, that's conflict. Absolutely. And depending on the type of story that you're writing, it might make perfect sense. We don't have any of that and say anything. The conflict that's happening here and why I just think James is a great villain. He is, he is such a good antagonist

19:16because he is a master manipulator. Like he plays head games with his daughter. Like it is, it is almost artistry in his villainy. Nothing I think with that playing head games with your kid is a good thing. Don't misunderstand what I'm saying here. I'm saying that his expertise in manipulation is really something to behold. Diane doesn't even see it coming. So at about 59 minutes in, which is quite far into the movie because it's only an hour and a half, James says to Diane, do you love him? And Diane replies, I like him a lot. So James then launches into his monologue. And I want to read it to you because because it's really good writing. It's really good writing. James says, listen to me, I know you like him. I know he is nothing like

20:17these frat kids you can't stand. But honey, after the excitement wears off, then what? What are you going to talk about? What do you have in common? You're going to be part of an international think tank and he's going to be kick and punching bags. I just think you should break up with him. Diane, you owe it to yourself to get on that plane with no attachments, no strings. Because after you get over there, things are going to change. People change. Diane, I'm not asking you to sever all relations with the boy. Give him a present. Let him know you still care. Here, give him this pen. It's only then at the suggestion of a breakup that Diane finally admits that she loves Lloyd. And what follows is the manipulation, right? This masterful bit of manipulation. James's monologue continues and he knows exactly which buttons to push to get Diane to do what he

21:20wants and to get her to think that it was her idea. She's like a marionette and he is a puppeteer. So in response to Diane claiming love for Lloyd, James has the following. Great. No, that's great. It's great to hear you say that because I don't know. What am I being selfish? Why am I so fixated? I guess it's because I got a lot of troubles. Is that it? Am I being selfish? I just want you to have everything. Is that wrong? I owe you an apology. I've just got a handful of weeks left with you and we should. I don't know what I'm trying to say. They think I'm guilty. Some computer spits out your name and another honest man. What's the goddamn point? Live your life. I love you. Now, I mean, I mean. Poor Diane. She is absolutely not prepared to respond to this and she's so young she doesn't recognize what it is.

22:30At this point in the movie, she still believes so deeply in her father, in his innocence, in his goodness, in his in his morality. She has him on an absolute pedestal and nothing and no one can knock him off that pedestal in her eyes. Right? Now, do I think James has a point about Lloyd? Yep. I sure do. But that's the point, right? With all great villains, they have a point that's hard to argue with. Lloyd is a hanger on. Lloyd really doesn't have much of a future. Diane really can do better. You know, she really should be raising the bar a little bit. She really should be going to England with a clear slate and going over there,

23:32ready to embrace all of the new experiences she's ready to have or she's going to have. Absolutely she should. So, you know, I'm with James there. But I don't agree with James' tactics and that is also the way with a really great villain. We can't argue with their perspective because they have a point, but their tactics suck. The tactics just aren't cool. You just don't talk to your child that way. You don't manipulate your child that way. So, here, this brilliant villain, and I really do love this master manipulator, speech as a piece of storytelling because it is not physical conflict because it is subtle storytelling. It's good writing and it shows us a whole different way for an antagonist to behave.

24:36This is an antagonist who plays head games, right? That is a really interesting type of character to write, whether you're writing a teen romance or a super villain story. I don't know. Any villain at all when they're this head-gaming type of guy or woman, they're really interesting characters to read. So, here we have Diane now, feeling completely guilty, she apologizes to her father and she hugs him. And in return, he brushes her off. She is crushed. She's completely devastated. And then in the very next scene, she calls Lloyd and asks to see him and they're driving around in his car in his blue Malibu and she breaks up with him. The very thing her father wanted her to do. Only now she's doing it because she thinks it's her decision to break up with Lloyd.

25:40Lloyd, our protagonist, goes into a tailspin for the rest of the middle build. So, the other thing I want you to pay attention to here is that the antagonists attack is not direct. James does not directly confront Lloyd. Instead, he overpowers Lloyd by manipulating Diane into breaking off the relationship. Diane is doing the dirty work for him, right? Another really interesting way for the antagonist to attack the protagonist, an indirect attack which is all about head games. Come on. This is an interesting character in any genre. And the other thing I like here is that it's in keeping with James's character, right? He is a silver-tunged devil. That is his superpower. That is how James managed to con all those seniors out of their money. That's how he did it. He smiles.

26:44I think of the line from the Pride and Prejudice film version. I can't remember if it's in the novel, but it's in the film where Mr. Bennett is talking about Wickham. And he says, Oh, he's Simpers and Smirks. It makes loves to us all. That is a great villain. Because on the surface, he's so charming and so lovely. Under the surface, he's a slippery little devil. He is a slippery sucker. And that is James. So, like I said, after the breakup Lloyd doesn't see Diane. He doesn't speak to her. Any more in this middle build. She doesn't answer his phone calls. And the middle build ends with, like I said, that famous scene of Lloyd standing outside her house with the boom box over his head playing in your eyes by Peter Gabriel. And Diane doesn't even acknowledge that. We see her on her bed, tossing and turning because she's thinking about her dad and all the troubles with the IRS. She hears Lloyd outside with the boom box, but she ignores it completely.

27:49All right. Oh my God. That was a lot. I'm so sorry. But it's a good middle build to examine. So that's all I have to say about the middle bill belonging to the villain Melanie. It's your turn. How did you go with your study of the ordinary world and how it's established? Well, this is really interesting. So you and I have a completely different take on the genre and how well it's layered in at the beginning. And and what I think the beginning does and doesn't do. So I find this is really fascinating. And it just depends right on the topic that we're studying this season. So this week I'm really into deep theory about the start of stories and and you know, I've looked at what's happening or I'm starting to now look at what's happening between the story teller and the reader or watcher in this case because we're watching movies. Now so far this season I've looked at the physics in close encounters of the third kind, which is the science fiction movie and time travel in a children's horror movie, which was Miss Perigon's home for a peculiar children.

28:59And just like these movies say anything starts in the contemporary world and the contemporary world for that particular movie. Right. And when it's filmed now this week the whole movie is set in the contemporary world. So it's slightly different from the others and there aren't any fantastic elements in it. So theoretically the risk of us being taken out of the story by unrealistic elements should be quite low. Now let's look a little bit at why that would happen. So I'm currently working my way through the book Story Logic by David Herman and this book is written like a PhD thesis. And at times it is so theoretical that it is difficult to decipher any practical meaning from it. However, there are moments of clarity and when those moments occur I have been drastically scrupling and you know putting lots of notes in the margins.

30:06And I know that if I come back to it so I'll read it through and I'm acting as quite a big book when I read it through and then start again because I know that my understanding at the end when I go back and read it again will be very different. Hopefully fingers crossed but it is a big book and it is difficult at times to get what I want out of it is taking a lot of work for me mentally. Now at the moment where I am in the book the book is examining the options for narrative references actions sequences and also the cognitive processes that readers use to interpret text. Now what I believe is being said in this part of the book is that readers make sense of the narrative when events small and large and character action occur in the context of the story and these are linked by cause and effect.

31:06Now Herman also reinforces that readers come to a text searching for cues that relate to their experience and their understanding of the world. Right now that's a lot again I can't understand that that's a lot and like I said it's very heavy reading but I do think it's going to be worthwhile for me in the end to have to go through this. But I want to break this down a little bit more the context of the story is established by the cues provided to the reader that enables them to access predetermined or re-experienced expectations about what's going on or what is happening. So readers make sense of the story based on what they already know and understand. The pre-knowledge comes from patterns within stories that readers have already consumed or experiences that they've already had or seen so they don't necessarily have to see it themselves they can experience things by carelessly.

32:15For the reader to understand the story the cues and patterns must be recognizable even if they're not identical and then readers map any newer or novel representations or presentations of events in stories onto what they already know. Now I translate this to mean that the type of stories and all of the elements in it all of the elements in it comply with the expectation of that story. And if the story is to be successful it can be different from what's been presented before but it can't be unrecognizable compared to the expectation that the reader has. Now I know that Valerie and Kathleen have been discussing genre in the hook your reader episodes of the podcast and what they are telling you is exactly what the book story logic is saying.

33:19Creating new genres or trying to connect types of stories that are unusual or unfamiliar makes it difficult for agents and publishers to understand what type of story you're written. Let alone try to think about where it could or should be placed in a bookshop. If the gatekeepers can't recognize your cues then readers won't either. So this is where understanding the theory of what you're doing and how it links not just to your story but directly around your story is really really important and this is what is being reinforced to me as I'm reading this book. Now this doesn't mean that your story needs to be the same as every other story readers love to map their understanding expectation onto new stories. Brains love similarity but they also like a little bit of variety because variety ignites the problem solving parts of the brain.

34:27So slight variations are rewarding for readers because they add to their mental maps. So what authors are doing when we understand the expectations of readers and varied the scenario and events just a little bit we are growing readers mental models. So two things are happening at once. However varying the cues cannot render your story unrecognizable. Now let's look at what expectations are established by the cues the storytellers use and what the variations they use say about say anything. So what this movie sets up is a dual storyline. Lloyd is in love with Diane and she is going and he is going to ask her out on a date. Whereas Diane is her father's best friend and focused on becoming the success her father wants her to be.

35:27The opening establishes or suggests a love triangle so Lloyd loves Diane. Diane doesn't want to disappoint her father so potentially Diane will have to choose between her career and father which a package does one and Lloyd if she falls in love with Lloyd. Now Lloyd is a little lost. He doesn't know what he wants to do after he leaves school but he plays with his nephew. He takes on the role of keymaster at the party and drives drunk people home so he is responsible quirky and kind. Lloyd convinces Diane to go to their graduation party together but she doesn't seem to like him that much but she doesn't seem to dislike him much either. So there's not much chemistry between them until there is in my view it's really weird. Well I find the opening part of this love story quite weird.

36:29So the cues we're presented with in the first 30 minutes establish a few things. This could be a love story with an optimistic or pessimistic ending. It could be a maturation story. And while normally love and maturation stories go together most of the time one of the genres has to take primacy over the other. Either the love story is the primary story and the maturation story is secondary or vice versa. So I don't think say anything presents clear cues about who needs to mature or if there's going to be any romance or not. Now I think this is because both are presented with equal weight. Diane's relationship with her father is a variation on the love triangle convention and Diane's father isn't a love interest per say in the romantic sense of the word. But as Valerie has really clearly articulated he is the biggest force of antagonism for Lloyd and Diane's relationship.

37:38Now the movie does suggest that a love triangle in a romantic sense could develop because Lloyd is congratulated for taking Diane as a date to the school party. And there are other boys who admire her and who would like to ask her out. But none of that eventuates into anything. The other confusing cue is about Lloyd. He doesn't know what he wants to do after school. So this sets up a maturation arc for him. And again, this doesn't hinder his love for Diane. Instead he decides at the grand age of 18 that he is going to be good at caring for Diane. He doesn't shift very far from beginning to end. And so he doesn't mature a great deal at all. Again, this is a sign that there is confusion around the type of story that we're watching.

38:39Now if I go back to what I said before, which was the context of the story is established by the cues provided to the reader that enables them to access predetermined or re-experienced expectations about what is happening. So readers make sense of the story based on what they already know and understand. Their pre-knowledge comes from patterns within stories that they have consumed. The cues and patterns must be recognizable even if they're not identical. So from the start, I don't think that the movie established its context or logic because the cues presented didn't clearly map to either a romance or a maturation story. I found parts of the story sweet and charming, but at many points I found myself wondering what sort of movie am I watching? I don't really understand what it is that is meant to be the focus point or the main point of the story.

39:42Now the point I made before about readers mapping the cues in a narrative to their expectation or experience explains how subjectivity works. Understanding the subjective nature of reading books or watching a novel will help you survive feedback and reviews. This is why it's good to get a variety of feedback when you're writing. If you get the same sort of feedback about something being off in your story, you need to think about it because somewhere in there lies a story logic problem. And if more than one person is having difficulty mapping your story to what they know and expect, it's a really, really good flag. Now I know that that is a very different take of analysis and it's very big and it's very encompassing and I am trying to make sense of it myself.

40:43And it's a different way of talking and it's using different words, but I am finding it very useful and very challenging to do analysis, especially at that beginning point of the story, seeing what is presented initially and then following those cues and the development of the story. As it goes through so it's different. It's difficult. It's not as clear yet as I would like it to be, but there are really big nuggets of gold that I'm getting out of it. All right, Valerie, what are your final thoughts on this week's movie? Well, before I get to the final thoughts, I did wonder how you're going to do with this movie because the beginning is so short. So there's not a lot of time there to to develop. So and it showed clearly. All right, final thoughts. I want you to look at your antagonist in your story. This is kind of an action item, I guess.

41:43Look at the antagonist in your story and ask yourself, what is what is their superpower? What are they really good at? And how are they using that particular gift of theirs against the protagonist? So we said that James was a silver tongue devil, right? I mean, he's really good at manipulating people. We saw that all the way through the movie and instead of attacking Lloyd directly and physically, he uses his skill at manipulating to manipulate another character in the story to do his dirty work for him. So ask yourself, what does your antagonist do really well? And how can they use that skill against your protagonist in the story? Now, maybe it'll work for the story that you're writing? Maybe it won't, but it's a really interesting exercise to play with. Let me know how you go.

42:44All right, that wraps it up for this week. Join us again next week when we discuss Spy Game. To support the show, please leave us a rating and review until you're right of friends about us. And if you're watching us on YouTube, be sure to like and subscribe. If you want us to review your query letter and the first 10 pages writing sample, go to storeiner.ca for all the details about how to submit. To get your free first 10 page checklist, visit valeriefrancest.ca slash checklist. And for more information about my books, visit me at MelanieHeal.au. And remember, story theory doesn't have to be difficult. It's a tool to help you write more, not less. So take it one step at a time and have fun.